On Sunday evening, I was out blowin’ the froth off of a few pints with a good friend of mine, who’s a local, living close to Freo. We were ambling along after having some nosh and we were utterly bemused at how softcock the port city has become on a public holiday (Foundation Day: a true Worst high day and holiday) Sunday night. Dead as. Try ordering a meal after 10PM: forget it! Bars were beginning to shut parts of their bars.

Is Freo falling to the wanker curse of gentrification? Have the herpes Hippies cleared off to such an extent that it is safe to inhabit and make anodyne, in the overpriced sense? Gee, you’d have more nightlife after midnight at the 24-hour servos near—but not in—the central 6160 area!

Softcocks. Where else can I get my kicks? Now that Teh Arrondissement has become host to these masturbatory parasites (I’m lookin’ at you, Duke Nukem), I might have to slum it in Vic Park, or Morley. I can even get a full menu all hours, unlike Freo. Ok, it’s Ed’s, but I would expect at least something there in Fremantle.

“Phenomenally culturally rich”? That’s me. Otherwise agree that copywriter needs eyes put out: “a vernacular of critical and knowledgeable talking points that surround us”??? Not as bad as this though – still a favourite.

If it means that I can stick my oar in about those people who purport to be “graphic designers” who use Arial and try to palm it off as Helvetica. If it as if they’re too not arsed enough to go either purchase that font suitcase, or use a Mac (which has had this Modernist font installed since Jobs knows when) and have the cheek to call themselves one amongst that profession. Those who choose not to have what is a staple font in print and design and (IMHO) a masterpiece of clarity and balance, are likely not worthy to call themselves one, using what is a reverse-engineered imitation rather than a sincere homage to the original (which Helvetica itself is an evolution of Akzidenz-Grotesk). This sorts the rank amateurs from the professionals and aesthetes.

Enough of my design fascism. Part of the reason why I chose not to continue in the discipline of design: so catty and precious, like my rant. Should be an entertaining night.

Skink, time and place for everything. If I really wanted to be a fascist, I’d cross the border south into the country of half of my origin and say my piece in Microgramma Bold, all uppercse, and send them away in a cowering mess of Curlz MT, or send them away and have them return re-educated, speaking a far more compliant DIN 1451 Mittelschrift.

But I’m not always a fascist pig, y’know…just seeing misappropriation and misuse of fonts brings out the dictatorial tendencies in me. Maybe I need to go to Affordable Comic Sans Counselling to confront my demons and exorcise them. But on the night, I shall be alternating between rotis urbanity and Gill Sans Ultra-Fuckoff sarcasm.

I didn’t ask him – I just went ahead and booked!
We have a French student arriving on the Tuesday and school goes back the next week so it was the only time we could fit in a holiday. If there was a late boat from freo then he could come over after the bar closed but I doubt there is more than one sad ferry during the winter.